Blaming the Elite, the Government, or the Global Economy? Blame Frames as a Cause of Populist Voting

Why do people vote for populist parties? We distinguish between policy voting and protest voting explanations, and further develop the protest voting model by connecting it to literature on issue competence and economic voting. We hypothesize that an anti-elitist blame frame is an effective strategy to downplay the competency of mainstream parties and encourage voters to sanction these parties by voting contra mainstream andpro populist. We suggest psychological and evolutionary reasons why the anti-elitist blame frame can be more effective than general government or external blame strategies. We continue by proposing an experimental research design that tests this hypothesis.